BIOL 473 Animal Communication
The course will provide a background for the field of animal communication including a discussion of definitions of animal communication. It will then survey the production, transmission and reception of auditory, visual, and chemical signals. Optimality theory and signal detection theory will be introduced as they apply to animal communication. It will spend some time on how signals come to be and why they have the design they do (signal evolution). Finally, it will investigate signaling in a variety of situations such as between potential mates, other conspecifics, as well as environmental and autocommunication signaling.
Credits
3
Offered
Every other year